Southern Middle students up and moving

Author: Tammy Lane • First Posted: Wednesday, August 25, 2010

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Southern Middle School has revamped its health and P.E. classes to ensure more students have more opportunities for movement and physical activity.

Southern Middle School has revamped its health and P.E. classes to ensure more students have more opportunities for movement and physical activity.

Southern Middle School has revamped its health and P.E. classes to ensure more students have more opportunities for movement and physical activity.The kids warm up together, then break into smaller groups for Lifetime Wellness lessons and Team Sports.Health vocabulary is embedded in physical activities. In one relay game, students match skills or sports with their relevant category -- flexibility, cardio or muscle strength.The health content is spread across both classes and often involves physical activities. The key is to keep the kids moving as much as possible.Southern Middle has a set of hand weights and medicine balls in the former health classroom, which is being converted into a fitness center.The school is also raising money to add elliptical machines and stationary bicycles.

At Southern Middle School, more kids are more active these days thanks to revamped health and physical education classes called Lifetime Wellness and Team Sports.

“The health content is integrated into both of these classes and is often taught through movement,” said Angela Stark, who previously taught health and P.E. separately in 90-minute blocks. “With so many kids falling into the obesity category now, we’ve got to get them moving.”

On a typical day, an entire class of students starts out in the gym warming up – perhaps with jumping jacks, quad stretches and a sliding/skipping/jogging version of musical chairs. The kids then split up for the health and P.E. components.

Lisa Hager, who formerly worked at Lansdowne Elementary, is team-teaching with Stark this year.

“Kids sit too much, so why have them sit through a 90-minute health class?” said Hager, who praised her colleague’s innovative approach.

Team Sports involves typical P.E. activities like basketball and volleyball, while Lifetime Wellness covers such topics as nutrition, stress management and conflict resolution.

“We’re embedding the health vocabulary into a physical movement,” Hager noted.

In one relay game, for example, students dash back and forth to match skills like jump-roping and sports like soccer with their relevant category, whether muscle strength, cardio or flexibility.

Each class meets twice a week, with the health content spread between them. Sprinkled in are opportunities like yoga, Pilates, bowling, badminton and Frisbee golf.

The changes have been popular with students.

“You get to experience more, instead of just learning about it,” said eighth-grader Chase Segebarth. “I’m on the football team, so it helps with all the running we have to do,” he added.

Classmate Jared Wilkins agreed the increased activity is a good move – one that helps kids relax in their other classes throughout the day. “I stay focused more by letting off stress,” he said.

The program change-up coincided with Southern receiving a grant from Lowe’s to convert its health classroom into a fitness center. Teachers and staff have already ripped out old cabinets, painted, added a wall of mirrors and installed athletic rubberized flooring.

The school has a set of hand weights and medicine balls, and is raising funds for elliptical machines and stationary bicycles. Southern also intends to add an outdoor walking track.

“We’re really trying to focus on fitness,” Stark said. “We want them to have the skills necessary to live a healthy lifestyle and know a variety of ways to exercise – not just running or walking or playing a sport. There’s so many other ways they can get activity.”